Netflix is not the future of TV
forbes.com
forbes.com
As an example, I hate going to the super market with my kids. We don't watch a ton of Disney movies, but even so, they are bombarded with Frozen shit six years after that movie came out. There are all kinds of things to buy marketed with Frozen that my kids would have begged for, IF we had been watching Frozen incessantly, if we had Disney+.
I will NOT be signing up for this. I would much rather watch the shows on Netflix that I know will never have plastic junky replicas occupying on shelf space in the supermarket. Frozen was an amazing story, and Disney has fantastic writers, directors, and animators, but I don't want them hypnotizing my kids and then trying to sell them shit for years.
I'm probably in the minority in that I have never seen one of the Avengers movies, and could care less about those blockbusters the author listed. But, I really do think we are entering a new phase in media consumption where I as a parent can choose my own streaming needs (HBO, for example, with little that my kids watch) AND I can find the right combination for my kids (Netflix and YouTube) that fits my need to avoid marketing to my children. I'm sure someone in those channels will find a way to sell crap to my kids, but it'll take some time.
I think there will still be people who want to watch the Avengers sixteen times on their five different screen sizes, and will sign up for Disney+. But, it might not be as many parents as they would hope for, and I have alternatives and won't be one of them.
It's just that Disney is like the scorpion and the monkey story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog).
"I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."
They just can't help but try to sell a bunch of shit to my kids.
I'm flirting with the idea of a review site for parents with the same concerns as you and I have. Maybe you want to write about what shows you enjoy putting in front of your girls? I'm curious?
Here is an example of the site: http://kidti.me/2019/review-monument-valley-the-most-brillia...
My kids love She—ra and Glitter Force. The latter is a pretty formulaic adaptation of Sailor Moon, but it is well done. PJ Masks is all the rage now. Octonauts is very educational. Puffin Rock was their favorite when they were younger. There is also Story Bots, with Snoop Dogg.
What’s even better than all this though is how much they love the podcast Wow in the World. It’s an NPR thing. I don’t even mind listening to it in the car (I told my kids from a very young age that kids music does not work in my car for some reason. Saved my sanity so many times!)
What has really changed is linear TV (aka traditional channels) is going away in favor of on-demand. People care about live sports, and to some extent live news. Other than that, on-demand is better.
So instead of the future being what we might have imagined 10 years ago, building a bundle of just the channels you want, instead will be building a bundle of just the distributors you want — ie. Disney originals vs Netflix vs Prime etc. I expect we will see more and more content signing exclusive deals with these aggregators as a result, and we probably also see a few more big brands throw their hat in the ring.
Netflix's problem is best captured in this sentence:
> Netflix users are spending more time streaming “The Office” than any other show on the streaming platform.
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-office-netflix-most-st...
Would a Disney streaming service cause people to switch or pay for both? That remains unclear, but I'd bet on a future of subscription fatigue where people pay for one video streaming service.
The main problem I still run into is the unavailability of content. Original Ghost Busters? Nope. Labyrinth? Nope. Seinfeld? Nope. If Netflix tried again to license everything under the sun, I would just give them the $50/month I currently pay overall for the 3.5 services I use.
I don't. I don't want to pay extra for it. Things such as Olympics or football championship are on public broadcast TV. Which is the only stuff I watch from cable. The rest is encumbered with pulp advertising anyway. Time is money.
However, if you want cable internet here, you get cable TV forced upon your throat...
The bigger question in my mind is whether a company will come along to build and market such a solution to the leagues (seeing as how there are many local/minor and foreign leagues that could benefit from similar tech), or whether the larger leagues will build it in-house first.
> the streaming-video giant put out nearly 90,000 minutes—close to 1,500 hours—of original series, movies, and other productions this year.
Maybe there is some concern about the quality of the content...
> In 2018, Netflix also became the first network in 17 years to dethrone HBO in Emmy nominations, and matched the premium-TV network in wins.
Netflix isn't going anywhere.
[1] https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-with-netflix-originals-is-...
Disney+ and Hulu are just an additional income stream for Disney. They have so many ways to make money off of content and don’t need to get in debt to do it.
- broadcast TV
- cable TV
- physical sells of media
-National/international theatric releases.
- Rental/purchase video on demand
Sure Disney+ may “lose money” for the first five years, but how much of that “loss” is paying other units of Disney for content?
That's not accurate. Netflix can and do license their Netflix Originals just the same as any other production studio. They just don't do so as frequently as streaming is a superior delivery platform (from their perspective) in terms of user lock-in & profitability (no middle men). Those latter two reasons are a strong driving force for why Disney (and prior to that Fox) have been moving into the space.
> getting in tons of debt
Do you have a source for this being a concern?
Everything I've ever read indicates their profits are soaring e.g.
- https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross...
- https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-is-growing-even-fa...
Granted, I can see there are articles regarding them being in debt:
- https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/is-netflix-in-debt-...
However, even that article ends with:
> SO IS NETFLIX’S DEBT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL?
> Nope! Every company has debt. Apple boasts some $US100 billion in debt, Disney around $50 billion, and Amazon about $8 billion.
Apple borrowed money to pay dividends and stock repurchasing to get around repatriating income before the tax changes. Netflix is borrowing money to keep up with much larger studios.
That's not accurate. Netflix can and do license their Netflix Originals just the same as any other production studio. They just don't do so as frequently as streaming is a superior delivery platform (from their perspective) in terms of user lock-in & profitability (no middle men). Those latter two reasons are a strong driving force for why Disney (and prior to that Fox) have been moving into the space
People don’t buy Netflix Originals on DVDs like they do Disney properties. People are still buying Disney DVDs of movies released 50 years ago. Disney is moving into streaming as an additional source of income.
Also, I feel like in the (actual) Netflix originals, they also put a lot more effort into it. If you compare CW's 'Arrow' fight scenes vs something like Daredevil or Punisher. Arrow's fight scenes are boring. But Disney is also very PG so I don't expect Disney to have the same level of Marvel TV series on their service.
So for me, I would subscribe to both. But I have no reason to subscribe to Hulu (and its TERRIBLE interface), HBO, or any of the other services available.
I couldn't work out why. It's a lot of money. Mind you, they might have been watching TV all day long - nothing better to do, I suppose.
It's easy to say 'just ditch Sky', but when the hard disk inside your sky receiver is full of downloaded/recorded content that isn't available for free anywhere else (so you'd have to pay for it again), it's hard to actually break away from the service.
For those that aren't aware, the content that is stored on your Sky receiver is encrypted to the boxes serial number AND your viewing card. According to Sky, it's impossible to copy the content to another box (even as part of a Sky Q upgrade), let alone extract it for viewing on another platform.
Sky use this tactic to lock the customers in.
They'll make you serve a 30 day notice period. Before that ends you'll get a better offer.
If you don't like that offer, actually leave. They'll send you an even better offer.
There's no need to pay full price for Sky once you're out of your first year's contract.
I'm from Germany and for premium satellite content (Sky) you pay 25-30 euros upwards for the movie and entertainment (shows and documentaries) packages.
I don't understand why people think it's a problem to need 6 different subscriptions -- there's literally no reason to have all 6 at the EXACT SAME MOMENT.
There are lots of people paying for things they don't need or could save money by switching subscriptions on & off as needed. This is one of the reasons why the subscription model is so popular with companies, not consumers.
So I've started to subscribe/unsubscribe to channels through prime. It's really easy to subscribe/unsub. I unsubscribed from HBO when game of thrones finished.
But... lots of things? lots of things unsubscribing is horribly painful.
A lot of things you have to call someone, listen to the sales pitch, look up a bunch of customer data you might not have anymore, and then listen to another sales pitch and then cancel.
I have started dealing with this by just canceling the credit card. (I've got one of those cards that lets me generate throw away numbers, so I don't have to cancel everything) way easier.
So, uh, my guess? my guess is that the 'subscribe to movie through amazon' is a lot less sticky than 'subscribe to channel through cable' just 'cause it's three clicks. And then another three clicks if you want to re-subscribe.
Also, I'm not convinced that per month subscriptions are the envisioned end-game. I would not be surprised if we saw a slow-boil move towards 24 months subscription blocks once the growth curve levels off. Cancelable on the third-last Tuesday before the beginning of the next block, via fax, between twelve and noon, we all know the drill. The current ease of switching a Netflix subscription on and off might be all courtship phase.
Didn't Disney buy Star Wars?
Universal is owned by Comcast.
And why stop there? The actor drinks soda from a green can, and if you watch the show now it will mostly be a can of Pepsi cola. But watch the show between January and April 2020 from Canada, and you will see the new maple syrup flavoured Dr Pepper instead.
https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/technology-changed-produ...
I know I'm in a minority though, and at some point in the next decade, streaming services will be the ONLY place content is released, and the concept of owning physical media will be considered archaic.
Still, I hope Netflix keeps Disney off their ground as I would prefer them competing against one another rather than seeing it replaced or bought up.
Netflix has been doing grandiose work be it in their shows or even their open-source work.
There will be months of buffering and bugs, and that will mean they won't get many customers. After 6 months of that, the IP will be forgotten by regular punters. If content isn't watched and talked about in schools/offices/at home/in memes, people forget fast. Disney's whole catalogue will get devalued.
They also have a controlling interest in Hulu.
That sounds exactly like the arguments against Uber to me: that these companies indeed have changed our day-to-day lives, but their innovations are in no way exclusive and users will easily switch between providers, quickly reacting to changes in quality of service (ride cost for Uber and Office and Friends being on Netflix).
My 5 year old boy will watch the same film again and again for days until he get bored and move to watching the next same movie for days, rinse and repeat.
my brother is 29 now but did the same thing when he was at that age, i still know most lines from lion king by hearth because of that.
i have a friend that watch braveheart at least once a year.
i myself, there are many movies that i would rewatch every once in a while, many from disney.
so it is not even a new or uncommon behavior that people watch the same movies again and again.
also, disney already announced several series just for this service from marvel (wanda and vision, winter soldier and falcon, loki) and star wars (mandalorian, a new clone war season), so yes they will have exclusive novel new content made just for it in there.
also, once it goes live all new movies from disney, marvel and star wars will only be available there.
so it is definitely not dead in the water.
Netflix has produced some really great TV (and quite a bit that's not so great), so they have track record here. But, whatever else you think of the company, Disney has decades of institutional experience in creating and monetising child-targeted animation. Growing the organisation that can do that isn't trivial.
You can make great TV by outsourcing to production companies who then deliver so many hours of content. I suspect it's much more complex to build an organisation that turns IP into multiple streams of recurring revenue, in the way that Disney does.
Besides “creating blockbusters” isn’t easy. See all of the other studios who are trying to create “shared universes”.
There is going to be a critical mass, I don't know where it is but I suspect its not far off, where enough subs around the world are paying a high enough rate while the need to produce new shows will be capped to keep people on the platform. Then you have a wheel where enormous amounts of cash is coming in every month and a fixed amount of content is being output. That's the path to profitability.
Then if the sub base and price point continues to rise, they have enough cash to do other things like build theaters or produce blockbuster films. And that's not even counting if they come up with additional ways to generate revenue such as licensing.
Netflix has around 150 million subscribers and they charge less in developing countries than the US. Their entire quarterly profit was $291 million last quarter. To put that in perspective, that’s half the profit that Disney made on Avengers Endgame alone and that’s not including merchandizing and home video sells and rentals.
Disney doesn’t need to get into debt for content and by the time Endgame reaches Disney+ it will have already made a larger profit probably than Netflix makes in an entire year.
A blockbuster film costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make. How many companies have the money and desire to play in that space? It's Disney's and a couple of other studio's wheelhouse. Netflix is quickly reaching the scale to compete there though and they have demonstrated the ability to hire away talent from all the major studios and quickly put out content that viewers demonstrably spend time watching.
It seems like half the bull case for Disney + is Endgame. How many people are going to pull out their wallets to sign up for a subscription to stream a six-month old movie that they've probably already seen if they're that excited about it? Seems like a stretch to me.
Disney’s revenue was three times that and they just added Fox.
Revenue means nothing without profit. Netflix’s total profit last quarter was less than that of either one of Disney’s last three Marvel movies.
Netflix is quickly reaching the scale to compete there though and they have demonstrated the ability to hire away talent from all the major studios and quickly put out content that viewers demonstrably spend time watching.
It’s not about the talent. Both Black Panther and Captain Marvel were made by unknown producers. Disney has multiple franchises that have been popular for decades.
It seems like half the bull case for Disney + is Endgame. How many people are going to pull out their wallets to sign up for a subscription to stream a six-month old movie that they've probably already seen if they're that excited about it? Seems like a stretch to me.
People are still buying Disney movies from decades ago. Kids will watch the same movie repeatedly. A lot of Disney movies are considered classics.
if Disney was this serious they should have launched their services when Netflix announced original productions.
No one cares about the protocol and the client - people want their content.
Content creators upload it to this network and the content becomes a standalone entity.
Platforms then have full open access to the content. The platforms compete on the UX/UI and recommendation algorithm layers. Every platform will have access to all content. But if Netflix provides the best viewing experience then people will pay a monthly fee to use it.
Each time the content is streamed, the user (or platform) pays a microfee per minute watched which goes directly back to the content creator.
Omitting quite a few technical details but you get the gist.
I’ll sign up for both